Administrative Structure Program Director, M. Charles Liberman, has 30 years of experience as an auditory neuroscientist, 25 years of continuous RO1 funding from the NIDCD, 8 years experience as PI of a PO1 grant entitled "Basic and Clinical Studies of the Auditory System" which supported six collaborative projects among investigators at the Center, and 5 years experience as PI of this P30 Research Center. He was PI on one Shared Instrumentation grant (and co-Pi on another) which funded the acquisition of much of the major equipment powering the Imaging Core. He has been Director of the Eaton-Peabody Laboratory for 8 years and has co-authored collaborative research papers with 12 of the 23 participating Investigators in this Research Center over the last 5 years (Core Progress Report Summary, p. 112). Thus, he is familiar with all the research projects underway. The Program Director will be responsible for interacting with all Center Investigators and Core technical personnel to facilitate smooth operation of each Core. There will continue to be regular meetings of each Core group with the Program Director, and relevant Core Pl(s) to discuss past progress, overall operations, as well as to set future goals and priorities. For the Engineering Core, these meetings will continue to held on a monthly basis. For the Imaging and Histology/Surgery Cores, meetings will be held quarterly. These Core meetings will be open to all participating Investigators. Additional informal meetings will occur on an as needed basis. This type of overall structure has worked well over the past five years, as documented in the individual Core Progress Reports. Experience has shown that meetings of the Engineering Core need to be held more often than for the other two Cores, because there are more Core staffers in Engineering, thus there are more projects underway simultaneously. All Core technical personnel in all three Cores are required to track their time and effort allocations in Excel spreadsheet format. These spreadsheets are reviewed on at least a quarterly basis by the Program Director and individual Core Pis, to assess which Center Investigators are receiving investigator-specific services, and how the time allocation for investigator-specific requests are balanced by time spent on Core-wide projects. An overview of the balance of activities over the past five years in each of the Cores is given in the relevant Core Progress Reports. The Program Director will be assisted in the day-to day operations and in integration of the three Cores by an administrator, Dianna Sands. She has over 15 years experience working with the Program Director and as well as most of the participating investigators. She will be responsible for interacting with MEEI research administration to track grant expenditures for consumables, to allocate salary expenditures among appropriate cost centers, to track incoming orders to make sure they are appropriately routed, and to arrange meetings as needed. Administrator Sands, in turn, will be aided by an office assistant, who is salary is paid by the MEEI research administration budget. As a team, Ms. Sands and her assistant are also responsible for many aspects of pre-award and post-award grant administration for all other grants held by Center Investigators.